The friends you keep

At the last moment, one last commission asked for Spider-Man and Mary Jane. It will be done by next week, along with the other remaining request.

1.

I wrote a short story for a friend this past weekend, at the beach. I’ve been thinking about it since he posted online a entry call for one page stories. I like one page stories, they are a different kind of challenge than longer stories, as they don’t have to follow a beginning-middle-end structure, they don’t need to make sense, they don’t even need characters. One page stories are glimpses. Thoughts. Reflections. Personal remarks. If, within these limitations, you can insert a story, some characters, and even perhaps a twist, you’ll learn more about the craft of writing comics than what you learn by writing the big and long sagas. Comics work page by page, and there’s no way better to practice the page dynamic than by making everything you want to say fit in only one page.

(the image above is a story I made back in 2013, which I wrote and drew, not the story I wrote for my friend last week)

The class I’m curating here in São Paulo will be filled with one page exercises, as well as one page examples. Understanding the power of the page is more important than learning how to draw (a reason why I’m accepting writers in the class and not only artists). Drawing is a personal journey where the rules – if there are any – are different (another point to be worked on the class).

2.

It was nice to see that Kelly Sue is writing a new comic book. Hollywood has kept her busy long enough, and I’m sure she’s in good need of the creative freedom only comic books provide.

It’s been a while since I last saw Kelly Sue, and back then it was during the pandemic and through Zoom. Before that, I went to Portland in 2019 for Rose City Comic Con, and visited her and Matt (Fraction)’s place.

3.

Grampá and Pedro Cobiaco, two of my artist friends from Brazil, are headed to San Diego to promote Braba, an anthology of Brazilian comics, co-curated by Grampá and published by Fantagraphics. Besides signing at the publisher’s booth on Friday (from 3:30PM to 4:30PM), they’ll be talking about the anthology and Brazilian comics on a panel also on Friday (from 11:30AM to 12:30PM, room 10). Here’s the Panel description:

“There is a thriving arts and comics scene in Brazil, and Fantagraphics is proud to pair with MINO to publish Braba, an extraordinary collection of 13 short stories created by 16 pioneering Brazilian cartoonists. Artist Pedro Cobiaco and artist and curator Rafael Grampá (Batman: Gargoyle of Gotham) will discuss the work, with a Q&A to follow.”

4.

Bá and I won’t be at San Diego Comic Con this year. Still pretty focused on coming back only when we have new comics to promote and discuss, we decided to stay home and keep working. We’ll probably hop online on Friday night to check the Eisner Awards ceremony, see if anybody we know (or are cheering for) won anything. We’ll miss seeing our friends in San Diego. As we often say, we’ve been to the show so many times that we used to divide our years in “before San Diego” and “after San Diego” instead of dividing it by seasons. Last week, during a coffee break at the studio, we were talking about how conventions have changed since we first started attending them, and how our approach to conventions have to be updated as well. Moving forward, once both Bá and I return to our “international jet set artist” status (with new books to promote, remember?), we’ll have to look at the conventions we’ve been before, as well as the ones we have yet to accept the invitation to attend, in a new way.

5.

Thinking about one page stories, I went online and found the pencils, inks and final colors of this one page story I did for the Liberty Comics anthology published in 2013. It’s nice to see the process of art being made, so I included the three images on this letter.

Be safe. Be kind. Be curious.
Pa-ZOW!

Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
July 22nd, 2024